A nation founded on thanksgiving.

Only because of Edward Winslow’s letter do we know of the first American thanksgiving turkey dinner in 1621. Mayflower passenger Winslow, was the leader of the Plymouth colony and would later serve three tems as governor of Massachusetts. Certifying the astoundingly friendly alliance beteen the Indianss and English colonists, Winslow wrote:

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others.

How to Tell the Thanksgiving Story

In his book, If You Can Keep It, author Eric Metaxes presents the miraculous series of events leading up to the alliance. The importance of the Indian Squanto to the starving settlers is well-known. But not the facts of his kidnapping as a boy in 1608 by English traders and subsequent return years later on another English ship. Metaxes writes:

“One day in the spring of 1621 a local native walked out of the woods to greet them. Somehow he actually spoke perfect English; and as it happened, he had grown up on the very land where they had settled. Because of this, he knew everything there was to know about how to survive there. He knew and showed them the best way to plant corn and squash so that they would thrive in that environment. He knew and showed them how to find fish and lobsters and eels there. He knew and showed them much that they couldn’t have known themselves. And because his tribe had perished, he had little better to do than help these suffering strangers. So the Pilgrims adopted him. And Squanto helped them immeasurably, likely saving their lives and almost certainly making it possible for them to continue there on this foreign soil.

Could this all have been happenstance?“

In 1789, while our staunchest ally, France, began a rtwelve-year-evolution that would decimate the church and kill close to a million people, America’s first president wrote a Thanksgiving proclamation. to his fellow Americans.

Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations

President, George Washington established a day of national thanksgiving in 1789. The first American president seeks to lead his fellow citizens in gratitude and a request “to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best…” READ MORE

Presidents Adams and Madison continued the tradition of a day of reflection and thanks to the Supreme Being. It was, however, President Lincoln who established an annual day of thanksgiving in the year, 1863.

Can anyone think of a less opportune time to declare a national holiday than in the middle of a war? Specifically a war between Americans? A war with twice the number of total US deaths than in the Vietnam war? Over 40% of the population?

And yet, that is precisely what President Abraham Lincoln did. His words are sobering, even awe-inspiring:

October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States
A Proclamation

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Abraham Lincoln

More than 600 proclamations

That a nation founded in gratitude: America is fact when we ponder the more than 600 Thanksgiving presidential proclamtions. The long line of American leaders take time to express their gratitude on behalf of Americans. Weak, strong, effective and not, sinners all of them praise and thank our Creator.

All of which brings to mind Saint Paul’s exhortation about thanksgiving with unease:

Rejoice always.

In all things give thanks for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

Thessolonians 5

Unease?

For me, you betcha. Too many things happen for which I don’t rejoice. All too frequently, I neglect to give thanks because I don’t trust that this is the will of God for me. It’s quite clear, isn’t it, that Saint Paul isn’t suggesting but rather ommanding? And so I trust that hardened resolve with willful intent and recollection restores everything.

Last week, I wrote of the new movie, Bonhoeffer. In that article, I mentioned that I was reading Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship for the third time. In this slow and careful read, sections I’d glossed over before, seem to shimmer and flash. Like this one:

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. …. we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for the Christ stands between us…
His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce all self-assertion, and quietly suffer in the face of hatred and wrong. In so doing they overcome evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate. But nowhere will that peace be more manifest than where they meet the wicked in peace and are ready to suffer at their hands. The peacemakers will carry the cross with their Lord, for it was on the cross that peace was made. Now that they are partners in Christ’s work of reconciliation, they are called the sons of God as he is the Son of God.
 

The Cost of Discipleship

Image courtesy of Father Boniface Hicks: Happy Thanksgiving